Day 7 of 100

Everything about this photo is bad. I was rushed. The backdrop has creases in it. My hair is a mess. My shirt has lint on it. I’m only smiling because my friend Aaron challenged to me to smile in a photo. Such imperfection.

I remember years ago when I lived in Boulder, Colorado (we are talking like more than a decade ago) I was walking out of the Foundry Group offices feeling really bad about myself. It had nothing to do with Foundry, I was just giving my inner critic more strength than he deserved.

I turned the corner and as I do when I’m my head, I looked at the ground and walked slow.

Across the street some random guy caught my attention. I stopped and really took him in. He was dressed like most people in Boulder dressed, torn down coat (it might have been Patagonia), worn denim jeans and Birkenstocks. For those that don’t know, Boulder is a nice place to live but for some reason many of the people who live there like to hide it behind this pseudo-poor look.

As I stared, he stopped walking and looked at me.

“Why is this random guy judging me?” I screamed in my head. “Fuck him.”

As I silently raged, a small voice perked up in the back of my head. “Why?”

“Why what!” I blasted the voice with my discontent.

“Why do you care?” It spoke slowly and simply.

All the anger disappeared like a soap bubble poked out of the sky.

In that moment I realized that I had no control over what people thought of me. I could only be me to the best of my ability. And at that moment, I stopped caring what people thought about me, my work, my life. I accepted that some will like it, some will hate it, and most will have no opinion. Regardless, their feelings are their feelings and have nothing to do with me.

So that picture? When I look at it I see all the imperfections in the subject and the technique. And those imperfections? They are me.

I’m cool with that.